Miscommunication
by sugar free vanilla
Summary: Richard Castle calls his wife... but it's a different Kate Beckett who picks up the phone. 7x06 AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Another 7x06 AU post ep, because my mind is a warren of plot bunnies right now. This will be a short multi-chapter, I think.**

**I will get to writing my other fics when I've slightly recovered from this episode. So in, say… a decade? Haha, no. But I think I'll get this done first.**

**Spoilers for 7x06, obviously.**

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><p>He stretches out languidly, only to be met with empty sheets and the rustle of paper.<p>

_Morning, husband. Driving your father-in-law back to the city - I would've woken you but I know you haven't slept well in a long while… and you're gonna need plenty of energy for what I've got planned for you. _His heart stutters at her references to their marriage - they're _married_, and it rushes through him in a surge of giddy elation even as he chuckles at the tiny, lopsided winking face she's doodled next to her little insinuation. _Love always, your wife, Kate Castle._

His grin blooms, like a flower in the springtime because she's being as much as a sap over this as he feels.

His wife. Kate _Castle. _

He hadn't expected her to take his name but she'd insisted, minutes before she spirited herself away to get ready, but he has no complaints. He doesn't feel like he has any right to complain about anything ever again, not when his dreams have manifested themselves finally, not when he's bound to her by law and by love, their futures coming together to join as one, sealed by the single greatest kiss of his life.

He misses her already, wants to touch her and kiss her and hold her close. Most of all, though, he needs to tell her he loves her. Reaching out, he picks up his phone, flicks to his favourites and quickly edits her contact to change her surname, and then pauses a moment, swallowing thickly as he takes in the '_Kate Castle' _shining bold and bright on the screen. He thumbs over it, unable to tear his gaze away even as the dialling tone begins so he switches to loudspeaker.

"Beckett," is a familiar sound, but his lips twist up in a dizzy smile as he laughs, deep and low.

"Don't you mean 'Castle'?" He corrects, only to be met with a long pause.

"Excuse me? Who is this?"

"I - Kate, it's me. Rick." What the hell is going on?

"Rick - Richard Castle?"

"Yeah, who else?"

"What kind of a sick joke is this? Richard Castle is dead - go to _hell."_

"_Oh my god," _he exhales breathily. "You're _her." _Captain Beckett, the Kate from his alternate reality. Not a dream, then.

"I don't have time for this," her voice is strained and taut, and he can picture her hunched over her desk, pinching the bridge of her nose the way she does when she gets stressed.

"No - Kate, wait! It's me, I swear - I've gotten home. Back to my world. God, this is so surreal… cross-dimension communication or something? So cool!"

A long pause.

"I swear - if you're kidding around, I will charge you with harassing a police officer. This is a private number."

"I swear, I'm not - listen a sec, okay? When I jumped in front of those bullets-" a sharp hiss through the line, the hitch of her breath an audible flinch. "- you asked me why. And I told you I love you. And then - then you asked me not to go, to stay with you - and I'm so sorry, Kate, but I didn't have a choice."

"Even if you had, you would have gone, though." She comments - almost mournfully he thinks, and his heart goes out to her - through space and time or whatever it is that separates his world from hers.

He can't refute her words, so for a long moment there's silence. "You believe me, then?"

"You haven't left me much choice, Mr. Castle."

"Please. It's Rick."

"Rick." She repeats, rolls the name on her tongue in a way that makes his heart twist - she tastes the syllable like it's foreign to her, like she's never whispered it into the dark of their bedroom as they spill secrets and confessions into the small hours, like she's never panted it, cried it again and again as they make love. This Kate hasn't of course, and it's a visceral ache in his chest as he remembers that this isn't his wife he's talking to, instead a near stranger - although he can't help loving her all the same. "I watched you die, Rick. I couldn't stop it, I-"

Her voice bubbles into panic, the threat of tears tainting her words with a darkness tangible even through the speaker of his phone.

"Shh, shh - I'm fine, love. Never better, I promise."

"I miss you," she blurts. "And it's so stupid, because we didn't even know each other… but I felt it, whatever _it _was. You gave me hope that I could be more than I've become, Castle; I wanted you with me, for you to help me get there. God. _I don't know you. _I'm sorry, this is ridiculous." Self-deprecation turns to sincerity turns to apology… turns to anger. "How dare you - why would you - you can't just make me feel that way and then _leave. _It's not fair. You can't just look at me the way you did and then _leave._"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart-"

"No! No. You don't get to call me that. You're not _here. _You're dead. I had to tell your family. Your daughter. And you know what she said to me? She told me she just got her father back - asked me, demanded I tell her why _I _had to take you away so soon. I have to live with that guilt, Ri- Mr. Castle. And you don't because _you're not here."_

"I am - I'm right here, Kate. Please, I never meant to hurt you, or my family. I just… there's no way I could have watched you get shot again. I wouldn't have survived it, and I'd be stuck in that world where I'd lost sight of who I was. So much so that my daughter - the light of my life, here - moved across country to get away from me. That I couldn't _write." _He takes a deep, steadying breath. "You know, in my world… that is to say, where I'm from, where I met you six years ago - I have this book series, based on you, about this amazing homicide detective - Nikki Heat."

"_Nikki Heat?" _She bites out, interrupting him. "What kind of a name is that?!"

"A cop name," he grins, and he's fairly sure he hears her mutter '_a stripper's name, more like'_ and the deja vu strikes him with intense warmth, pleasant nostalgia a soothing balm in his veins. "I just released the sixth book - and the poorest selling Nikki did three times as well as the most successful Storm. And that's all down to _you_, how extraordinary you are-"

"About how extraordinary _she _is, don't you mean? Your Kate, your me." Her voice is brittle, a little bitter. "I'm not her - she would never compromise, remember?"

"And nor did you," he says, soft as anything. "You didn't, either in the end. Don't you see, Kate? You're the same - beaten down by the system, perhaps, not as happy. But just as incredible."

"You could have been happy with me? If you hadn't gotten home, I mean. If you'd stayed with me."

"I could never be unhappy with you."

"You think we would have worked? I'm not - you say I'm the same, but I'm not. I have… this _wall_-"

He laughs. "I've knocked it down once, Kate. I'd do everything in my power to make it fall again."

"I - I - this is just so crazy. I don't even - I have no _right _to want you like this." She sounds distraught, confused.

"Call it fate, Kate."

"I don't believe in fate."

"Maybe not. But you - well, my Kate, my wife - told me once that there is one inexplicable, mysterious phenomenon she does believe in. And that's us."

"Your wife?" She asks, sharply. "You never mentioned - when? You didn't have a ring…"

"Last night, after I got home. I realised I didn't want to waste another minute, and neither did you."

"Neither did _she."_

"You." He repeats obstinately - because she's Kate, and there could never be a version of Kate Beckett/Castle who he doesn't love.

"I'm - I can't believe you sat and listened to me saying I _want _you. You're married! Is that not… weird for you?"

"So weird, believe me. But I _love _crazy."

"You're married. I should - God, I should just hang up. But you're _alive. _I watched you die, and now I'm talking to you. In a parallel universe. I feel like this is some mad dream-"

"I promise you, it's not."

"If it is, I don't think I want to wake up." He's sure she's only saying these things because she's more than half convinced that this _isn't _real, and that's allowing her to be more open, more vulnerable than she'd allowed herself to be even after years of knowing her in his reality.

A minute or so of silence stretches out, until her voice floats through the speaker carrying a hesitant question.

"Would you read to me? This _Heat _series of yours - it's been so long since you…" She trails off.

"Since I wrote anything decent?" He takes her quiet laugh as an affirmative, leans over the bed to reach into his wife's bedside drawer where he knows she stores a copy of _Heatwave_, as she does at home in the loft.

Clearing his throat, he begins. "It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body…"

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	2. Chapter 2

**The response to this was super great and I'm so thankful for all your alerts/favourites and especially reviews (which I'll reply to eventually, I swear. Probably tomorrow).**

**This is still far from done - hope you enjoy this, and continue to do so as it progresses!**

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><p><strong>CHAPTER TWO<strong>

"Castle - I think you should get a glass of water." She laughs through the phone as he concludes the fifth chapter, his voice hoarse and cracking. There's stacks of paperwork piled on her desk, neglected, but really she shouldn't even be in the precinct. The brush with death was so close, the fact she had to cope with someone sacrificing themselves to save her too serious and 1PP had instructed her to take a few days. Not that she'd listened.

"You sure?" He rasps. Heat flames in her stomach at the deep husk and, swallowing heavily, she shuts her eyes against the feeling, finds calm in the blackness behind her lids.

"Wouldn't want to be responsible for you losing your voice - 'sides, if you do, I'm not going to hear any more of it, and I'm kinda hooked, Castle." There's no reply for a moment, just the rustling of sheets and the muted drag of his hand over his phone's microphone as he gets up, taking the cell with him - she realises that he was in bed, an image that both warms and chills her; the intimacy of his setting versus the fact that its unattainable to her.

She's slowly coming around to the idea that this isn't a dream. She's not an author, and there's no way she could have thought up, let alone written what she heard of that book - it's good, really great actually. Not even half way in and she loves it, finds herself invested in the characters - not just the detective based on her, but Raley and Ochoa and Lauren and Captain Montrose. And Rook.

She thinks she might like Rook more than she should.

Aside from the investigative journalist, though, the characters - as much as she delights in them - fill her with a sickening sort of sentimentality that sticks in her throat, shimmers in her eyes. It's like them six years ago, back when her relationship with her partners wasn't tainted by her rise to authority and the subsequent consequences, when Montgomery was alive and well, before he had been shot in a home robbery that had gone unsolved.

As for Nikki Heat, she recognises the main character in the way _he _had looked at her, in the brief time she'd spent with him. It had all been there in his eyes, with an infinite surplus of more, something beyond the respect he had for who she is - or was, or can be… she's not entirely sure.

Beckett's distracted from her thoughts by the spurt of water from a tap, before the stream calms slightly into a steadier stream - she's hyper aware of everything on his end of the phone and she can make out a cracking yawn over the white noise of the faucet. She thinks she can picture it, the stretch of the gorgeous arms that had had her hot and bothered even before the date-that-wasn't, from the moment she'd noticed the delicious breadth of his shoulders beneath the fabric of his shirt, the unintentional shifts of the thick muscle banded at his biceps. Her minds' eye switches to his face, and she imagines those ruggedly handsome features twisting, mouth gaping, nose and eyes scrunching. There's some little-boy innocence about the image she conjures up that has her melting even more for this man (_ridiculous_, she tells herself, _this is all still ridiculous). _

"So, you're hooked, huh?" He asks, and her hearts halts in its rhythm, breath fleeing her lungs in a rush of air.

"Excuse me?"

"On the book? You're hooked on the book." Her pulse stutters back to life, the beat of it skewed temporarily but calming rapidly.

"Y-yeah." She murmurs shakily. "I love the book."

"And we've not even reached page one-oh-five yet!" There's wicked glee to his voice, a mischievous excitement that has her drawing her bottom lip against the rough scrape of her teeth warily.

"What's page one-oh-five?" She's almost scared to ask, and the long, slightly evil chuckle she receives in reply does nothing to assuage her apprehension.

"You wait and see, Kate." She's on the verge of snapping back at him to just tell her already when another thought settles on the bones of her ribcage like lead, heavy and suffocating.

"Castle - what if this phone call is all we have? You were trying to get through to _your _Kate. What if next time you ring this number, she picks up? I don't… I don't want this to be it. And I don't think either of us have the time for you to read all six of this Heat series of yours out loud to me!" Her voice raises towards the end as she freaks out a little - it's not _panicked _per se, just a little higher than normal, a thread of vulnerability snaking through the words. She takes a deep breath, another and another. "This can't be it, Castle."

A long pause, not so much as a breath from the other end of the line and for a second she thinks that she's jinxed it, her desperation for him to stay causing the exact opposite _again_ (after all, when was the last time the universe gave Katherine Beckett what she wanted - except, perhaps, this chance to talk to Richard Castle once more), but then he speaks. His voice is quiet, a little sad, perhaps when he makes his suggestion.

"I've got one solution for that, maybe - if it works. I could try sending you the files of the manuscripts… I can access them from my phone, if the connection's just between our phones. And then you could - I don't know, try and get them published posthumously? Beckett… I don't want to be remembered by that _crap_ I last published, even if it weren't me who wrote it. I want to be known by _our _story, regardless that it didn't happen in that world - this is the only way it can, now.

"_Yes_," she exhales sharply - she's already seen (studied obsessively, more like) some of the first news stories talking about his death, with reference to the tragedy of his downfall after killing off his 'golden goose', discussing his failures. One quote claws sharply in her guts - '_at least Richard Castle, unproductive as he had been in the final six years of his life, was not entirely useless in his death, reportedly saving the life of the NYPD's Captain Katherine Beckett of the Twelfth Precinct. Although, some speculate that the writer had been wildly drunk at the time, and his heroics were more a case of drunken stupidity… what else is the once-lauded author known for nowadays?' _"Castle - yes. That'd be… do you think it will work?"

She can almost hear his shrug as he tells her there's only one way to find out, something in the careful nonchalance of his tone strained, and she's sure he'll carry his act of insouciance through his entire body. Even in the brief time she'd spent with him, it had become clear that this Richard Castle never does anything halfway.

The seconds after she rattles off her email, and he sends the files are excruciating, the wait to see if the messages go through almost too much to bear. Because, though neither of them have said anything aloud, this is as much about the communication problem as the issue of his books.

If this works, they have another avenue of correspondence.

Her phone vibrates sharply, and she counts each one, an extra measure of relief diffusing through her blood with each new set of oscillations.

Six buzzes.

Six notifications.

_Six new emails from Richard Castle._

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><p><strong>AN: Just out of interest, I'm super curious (like so so so so) to know where people stand on the whole parallel universe versus dream thing. I mean, I think it's fairly obvious I'm all for the alternate reality being a real thing, but I know there's a great many people who are 32948234% more logical than I. So if you wanna tell me what you think about that, there's obviously here, via review or pm… or my tumblr/twitter below. (If you don't wanna share your theories, that's cool too. I won't be at all hurt and/or offended /3)**

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	3. Chapter 3

**You guys are so unbelievably great, you know that? A hundred followers in two chapters is crazy and I'm so very grateful for that support, and so very glad that people seem to be enjoying this. Wow.**

**On with the show!**

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><p>"You got them?" He asks when he hears her sharp gasp filtering through the speaker, his tone almost pleading, as if she has any control over whether or not his emails got to her.<p>

"Y-yeah," she replies shakily, and he can almost picture how the tremor that taints her voice will be manifesting in the tiniest trembling of her fingers, the ones his Kate would stop by clenching her hands into tight fists around her thumbs; the shudder that would pulse through her foot and send it tapping a jittering dance against the leg of her desk, the way he's not even sure his _wife _is aware she does when she's tense; the drawing of her bottom lip against her upper teeth once the words have been released, as if she can retract the wavering tone that's far from her usual firm talk just by biting down on the flesh it had escaped through.

He's certain, he realises, that the Kate on the other side of the line is doing these things. That fundamentally, she's still the same woman. And that's why he loves her still, even if she's not technically his wife.

Who will, incidentally, be home any minute now. He's excited to tell her, wants to share everything with her about his day so far - the most significant event, this phone call, of course… but also the little things. Wants to laugh with her about the fact her bra was still hanging from the banister even though this morning their families - famil_y, _now, he thinks delightedly - had been here, and to tell her about the hopeful omen of the shining bronze penny he'd scooped up from the kitchen floor as he'd grabbed a glass of water. To kiss her soundly and share with her how he felt as his gaze had tripped out of the window to land on the spot where they'd exchanged their marriage vows, and to whisper the thoughts that had dawned on him with the waking world that spoke of a gorgeous future, their family… how he'd dreamt they'd add to it someday.

Thoughts he couldn't possibly share with the Kate on the other end of the phone.

"They came through." He realises then, that this entire tide of thoughts had swept through him with tsunami strength in the span of a split-second, and he makes a conscious effort to tamp down the flow of hectic notions that threaten to drag him under should he not swim against the force of them. It's not an unpleasant prospect - in some ways, he'd like nothing more than to sink into his vivid imagination and bask in the glow of images of a future not too far from his reach. But he has no clue when his time with this Kate, Captain Beckett, will cease and he's not going to waste a minute of it. "Castle, they came through!" Her voice bursts through the phone with the barest touch of hysteria, that disbelieving laugh that usually comes with wide eyes (and kisses) colouring the words. "They came through!"

He chuckles. "They came through, Kate. I'm glad."

And he is. Glad that the world he'd hated would retain a better memory of him than the one he has of _it_, that he'll be remembered for words he's proud of and not the awful, terrible, _disgraceful _book the other version of him had last published. That the other version of his daughter would believe she had even more of her father back - the aspect of him that was always the writer, that he'd apparently lost somewhere along the way, there. He hopes it will bring her comfort, instead of reminding her of what's gone.

Most of all, though, his heart beats a little faster for what this means for this connection of theirs - if it's not just this phone call, will it extend past their current conversation? What's the deal? Must the communication be digitised or insubstantial or formed of little wave things or… Alexis has definitely explained to him how these things work. He'd definitely ignored her so that he could continue to account it to the magic of modern day technology.

This, however, is definitely leaning towards the mystical. Or science-fiction at the very least.

"So… it's not just this call, then?" He throws out there, catches most of the elation he feels at that supposition in his throat. He can't help the wisp of it that escapes and condenses into sparkling hope, though.

"I don't - I'm not - I… It could be that - well… Castle?" She gets out in a fractured mess.

"Hm?" It's a gentle prompt, a '_spit it out' _with none of the hostility and all of the encouragement.

"I think I have a theory." She sighs, heavy and solemn and he thinks maybe with gritted teeth, such is her distaste for having to accept this possibility as reality. And probably, he thinks (with no small measure of glee), for having come up with what is bound to be an outlandish theory to explain it all.

"Well, go on Detective - _Captain_," he hastily corrects himself. "Share with the class."

He imagines the angry blush that would stain her cheeks, the reluctance in her voice reminding him of the few times that she (_his_ Kate, that is) had been forced to admit that she had been wrong about something, and he correct. His success in committing every last detail of these rare occasions to memory is evident in the way he can pick out the delicate, barely there intonations that spotlight her disrelish of the situation, the bite of her plosives crisper than usual and a slight hiss of sibilance to every fricative.

"I may have salvaged the artefact you were holding when you - went home," she changes the trajectory of the sentence midway, as though to say he died would be too painful. Even her words of choice, stick a little in her throat. "And when you called… I was wishing - that I'd get to spend more time with you, to become more than _this. _Than a shell of who I used to be. And I was wishing that I could get closure for my - the case I was telling you about, the one I couldn't solve? It was my mother's…" Her words trail off, yet she starts up again before he can interject. "You know that already, of course. What am I saying?" A sigh, shattered and splintered scrapes sharp shards through the speaker. "Anyway - I did my research into the thing, of course. When we were working the case. It said it had the power to shift a person into a parallel universe - like I guess it did you…"

"Are you - are you saying you're in this world right now? What about my Kate? My _wife _- where's she gone?! _Where is she?_" Panic rises hot and thick, a bubbling mess of burning magma and he forgets for a second who he's talking to. Her silence speaks volumes, yet when she speaks her voice is tight and restrained, holding back the hurt he can tell she's feeling. She speaks over him when he tries to apologise.

"You've nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Castle." Back to the formal address, he knows she's pulling away. "But, no. I'm still in my - universe. Staring at a nameplate that says 'Captain Beckett'. Don't worry about your… wife." He winces at her tone - he can't decide if it's cold or burning. Either way, the word crawls out like a sore-spot (it sets his stomach fluttering nevertheless). "I figured - maybe for what I was wondering about… I assume you were picturing a world where we'd never met when you ended up in mine… but what I was thinking, when you called - it didn't actually require me to be anywhere else. I just had to talk to you."

"Kate, I can answer it for you, you know?" Castle blurts, the words tangling in their race to escape his lungs. "Who killed your mother. How you can bring them down."

She breathes heavily, laboured. "I know. I figured as much. If I'm in a place where I can marry you, there."

"You agreed before we brought him down, actually." He can't help but object. Realises it doesn't much help, and closes his mouth on that topic - he doubts she want his relationship flaunted in her face, not when he's dead and absent from this Kate's world. "So you want me to tell you? Because if you just look-"

"_No!" _She hisses, loud enough that it causes him to move the phone further from his ear, the blast of the loudspeaker painfully harsh at close proximity. "Don't you see, Castle? Don't you get it?! As soon as I get what I was wondering about, this stops - this connection or whatever the hell it is. It _stops! _It stops, and I lose you again - I'm sure of it. Can we just - wait. Wait a little while. Please." He thinks her palm must move to cover the microphone on her cell as the sound suddenly twists, becomes muffled and distorted. It's not enough to hide the half-sob that echoes on the other end of the line. A long, stretched out moment passes before she speaks again, voice smaller than before. "I don't want to say goodbye just yet."

His heart sinks in his chest, only to be buoyed by a counter force of delight when he hears the door open and realises his wife is home.

Kate takes one look at her husbands stricken face before she hurries to him, threads her hands through his hair and then settles her palms against his cheeks. An intimate, insistent gesture. "Babe? What's wrong?"

He closes his eyes tight and wonders why the _hell _he had been so excited to tell her all about this not long before.

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><p><strong>This fic was intended as an exercise in dialogue, because I feel it's a definite weak spot for me, and by having a story focusing on an over-the-phone conversation I'm sort of forced into it - and yet, in this chapter I managed to avoid any lengthy speaking for a fair while, haha.<strong>

**But what I was wondering about that, is: When I write dialogue, I tend to try and make it emulate natural speech as best I can, with pauses and fragmented sentences etc, but I was wondering if that makes it harder to follow? I know I include a bunch of dashes and ellipses and stuff and I just kinda wanna know if, stylistically, people would prefer plainer speech? **

**Just a girl trying to improve her writing, haha. :)**

**Thanks so much for reading, and all the alerts/favourites/reviews (I think I managed to reply to them all?) so far. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! **

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	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry that it's taken me so long to update - life got in the way. And also my procrastination levels are out of control. Oops. **

"Castle... Are you okay?" He's throwing glances from his phone to his wife, usual mastery of the English language failing him as he struggles for the words to explain what's going on. "Who's on the phone?"

"You."

"I… what? Have you tried calling me? I didn't hear my phone ring… Were you worried about me or something? I left you a note - for God's sake, Castle! Talk to me. What's wrong?" Her tenderness breaks through to concerned irritation at his lack of response.

"Just - you're not gonna believe me."

"Try me." She shifts from her position, stooped in front of him and cradling his cheeks in her palms in an attempt at comfort, moves to perch next to him on the couch. Tucking herself into his side, she lifts her gaze with intent - meets his eyes with intensity, irises burning with the promise that her faith in him is absolute, and she'll give even the most outlandish of replies the benefit of the doubt.

"I… Well. I told you about when I hit my head at that coal factory?"

"Your dream, right? Where we'd never met."

"It wasn't a dream."

"Castle…" She pauses for a second, gauging his expression. Doesn't seem to find any hint of play there. "Lanie checked you out for a concussion, right?"

Well. At least she believes that _he _believes it.

"Yes, she did. And I'm not suffering from a head injury or delusion or anything. Here, take the phone."

She does so reluctantly, her hand withdrawing from its resting place upon his thigh to sweep through her hair as the other lifts his phone to her ear. "This is Kate Beckett. Kate Castle, even." Flashes him a grin at that. She flinches a second later as the _other _Beckett answers, loudspeaker still on. "Jesus, Castle! You could've warned me." He says nothing. Just stares at her in silence as he waits for the captain to start speaking again.

"_This _is Kate Beckett. Actually Kate Beckett. Captain Kate Beckett, of the Twelfth Precinct."

His wife's eyes narrow into angry slits, and he can read the cogs turning in her mind - wondering who would impersonate her, how, why.

"Look, I don't know _who _you are or what you're playing at. But you've caused _my husband _serious distress and-"

There's a snort from the other end of the line, a sarcastic grumble along the lines of "'Cause I'm definitely the one who's caused _him _distress."

"Hey!" He interjects. "Rude."

At least she's not on the verge of tears any more.

"You threw yourself in front of two bullets for me, Castle. And then _died. _Bled out on me. I think I win on the who-has-more-to-be-distressed-by claim."

_His _Kate is frowning, disbelief etched into her features and intermingling with a fair dose of horror. And then he has an idea. He leans over, taps the facetime button on the screen.

"Kate," he tells the captain, ignores the wince he feels twist his features as the woman next to him furrows her eyes further at his personal address to the speaker at the end of the line - who, as far as Beckett is concerned, is a fraud. "Accept the request."

She does. The Kate next to him - and _God_, that's getting confusing - freezes, stock still. Her hand's in mid air, half on its way to curling at the nape of his neck but halted by shock. "Believe me now?" It's a weak chuckle that accompanies his poor attempt at humour, but it's enough to pull her from her fugue, bring her back to him.

"I - Jesus. I don't believe in - this sort of thing isn't _real! _You know I love science fiction - but - in actuality?" A long pause. "She's me. _She's me_, Castle."

"And you're _me."_

"_Crap," _they say in unison. Castle barks out a laugh. Somewhere on the spectrum between a scowl and a smirk is his wife's expression; he's not sure he's ever seen her this muddled.

He shuffles closer to Kate, leans in and props his chin on her shoulder for a better view of the screen. Captain Beckett… well, she looked better when he'd been stuck in that reality. No heavy bags under her eyes, no redness to the whites of them. Even her hair is lank, pulled back in a severe bun that does nothing to soften the signs of exhaustion on her face.

"Rick," she breathes. "Rick, oh God. You're - Jesus. You're really alive."

"I really am." The smile he offers her is - not sad, exactly. Some point before _sad_ but well after merely sympathetic. "Did you sleep at all?"

Even on the screen, her hesitation to answer is blatant. The drop of her eyes, then her head. The subtle movement of the camera to hide most of her face, the shift small enough to seem unintentional, with the sharp edge of her jaw and cheekbone still in frame.

"It's so good to see you not in a body bag," there's sardonicism in her words, but a softness to it that catches in his chest, even as she avoids his question.

"I'm good not to be in a body bag, I can't lie." Her face swims back into view, eyes liquid pools of golden brown and slightly downcast as she studies the screen instead of looking directly into the camera. Studies him.

His Kate wriggles further into him - he's unsure if it's conscious or not, but she's staking her claim and the fact she feels she needs to do that kills him. Because she's his _wife _now - there shouldn't be any doubt of them, she shouldn't need to feel insecure or jealous or even consider that his feelings for another woman may not be entirely platonic.

And while she may not be 'another woman' in the strictest sense of the word, the lines are far more blurred for him than they are her. And of course, he loves the Kate by his side most - six years, growing apart and then together and _up_; she's exactly perfect for him, the one who knows him better than anyone else and adores him anyway.

The fact he loves the other Kate too hadn't felt so wrong before - but speaking to them both at once, one in person, one on a screen, drives home the fact that they aren't one and the same. Stirs guilt deep in stomach and leaves him wondering _how _bad it is, to love a woman who isn't your wife when she sort of… is?

"Hey, Castle?" Her breath is warm against his cheek, the brush of her fingers over the shell of his ear so natural, so normal these days that he doesn't think it to be her marking her territory. Just an automatic expression of her love without even thinking. It's gorgeous, the way she inadvertently shows the depth of her affection for him, he thinks.

"Yeah?"

"Do you mind if I talk to-" she hesitates a moment, clearly confused as to how she's meant to refer to her counterpart. "Captain Beckett. Do you mind if I talk to Captain Beckett? Alone."

He nods, extricates himself and stands. Lingers a moment before grudgingly making his exit, the grim set of his wife's mouth as he leaves prevalent in his mind as he leaves the pair to talk.

**This chapter was super hard to write with the two Kates and the triple dynamic and arghhhh, 3.17am is not the time of day to be writing things like this. My brain hurts.**

**I'll try to be speedier with the next update. Back to a duologue, which I can deal with. Probably from AU!KB's perspective.**

**Also I just wanted to stress that, although I don't think I managed to reply to most of the reviews on the last chapter, every single one of them was massively appreciated, as are the alerts and favourites. Thank you so much for being wonderful.**

**(and happy Thanksgiving for Thursday, to those who celebrate it, because I doubt I'll publish anything else before then)**

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	5. Chapter 5

**Shorter wait and a longer chapter than usual. This would've probably ended up at like 5000 words but I decided to split the planned scene into two and end this on a dramatic note.**

**Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it! And happy Thursday to those of you like me, who don't.**

**Also a massive happy birthday to sanumarox123 for yesterday, because she is a princess and absolutely adorable and you should love her as much as I do.**

**Chapter 5**

Captain Kate Beckett's heart pulses stutteringly in her throat, her stomach somewhere near her feet. It's sort of ridiculous, how nervous she is to speak to _herself_ (and more than sort of ridiculous that she can talk to herself this way at all) but she's sick with it.

There's a steely determination in the other woman's eyes as she stares down at the near-mirror of her own face glowing on the display of her cell, the look that she's lost somewhere along the way, despite her captaincy - maybe even because of it, the official authority lessening the need for that aura of command to carry her through. Despite that hard strength though, there's something softer about Castle's wife. Not worn down, beaten until her edges became weathered and smooth; it's happiness rather, satisfaction; it gentles the sharp lines of her features and Kate thinks that may be the biggest difference between them, appearance wise. She looks at her reflection, sees an emptiness there. A shell of who she used to be, who she could have been - but there's a universe written across the other version of her's face, thousands of murals sketched across her countenance and a wealth of tales waiting to be uncovered in the subtle lines etched into her skin, the levity in her eyes that is at the same time heavy, grounded.

Kate wishes the same could be said for her.

She blinks, once, twice, yet her alternate still says nothing. Just appraises her with that hard stare, long and steady and unflinching in its intensity.

"You said… you wanted to talk?" She hates the hesitancy leaking from her vocal chords, wonders where her self-assured confidence has gone.

"Mmm." Is all the other she says.

"... So, are you going to?"

Another long pause and _oh. _She gets it. The silence, the psyching-out - she's prepping for an interrogation. This Kate must still perform them regularly, she realises. She misses the triumph of breaking a suspect, of drawing their confession from them thread by thread until they're entirely unraveled. Captaincy is paper-pushing, really - paperwork and politics.

Still, the realisation allows her to take back a little of the power here. She can put a stop to the strategy now, start this… chat of theirs before she's even more unnerved.

"You can quit with the interrogation tactics. You're not the only cop, here."

"Worth a shot," the tiniest of smiles plays on the detective's lips. A smirk, really. Unapologetic. "Took you a while to catch on, though."

"It's been a while since I've interrogated anyone. Other than Castle, I mean - and we just… we thought he was a little touched in the head, so we weren't playing games with him."

"Why? Did you question him, I mean. I want to hear the story, the whole thing. He didn't tell me very much… but I want your point of view. No protection from any of it, anything difficult or hard, okay? I want it all. Not the Kate-safe version that Castle would probably edit for me."

"You don't trust him?" She recoils minutely at the sharpness of the other her's glare at that, the movement probably not even perceptible to the woman on the other end of the video call.

"Of _course _I trust him. He's my partner, best friend. Husband. I trust him more than _anyone _in the world. And I trust that he'll _always _do what he thinks best to protect me, misguided as he may be sometimes."

"Okay." She accepts, because really, what else is there to _say _to that when all she feels is a misplaced jealousy that curdles in her gut? Because she wants someone to rely on like that, wants him. "Where do you want me to start?"

"The beginning."

* * *

><p>"Well, he showed up at the precinct, claimed I was in trouble - the boys called me over and I… I told him I'd never seen him before, which was a lie but-"<p>

"When had you?"

"A book signing… when I was with Will Sorenson. Did you- I don't know, is the only divergence in our lives where you met Castle and I didn't? Or was before that different for you t-"

"No," she interrupts. "That happened for me too. Just- did you tell Castle about that at all? Because I-"

"...He said I'd - _you'd -_ never told him that before - I'm sorry, I had no idea. I thought he was just delusional at this stage."

A soft noise of dismissal floats through the speaker, the detective's gaze faraway and lacking its crisp edge, now. "No… God, you weren't to know. Just. I was gonna tell him tonight. Late wedding present of sorts. He likes knowing things - about me, my past, anything. He likes to know."

"He had a way of making me spill my guts to him," Kate admits. "He had me opening up to him in a way that I haven't done with anyone for years; on our date-"

"_Excuse _me?" There's a danger to that tone, possessiveness scattered in soundwaves and filtering through the speaker.

"Not like - I _thought _it was a date. He asked if he could buy me a drink, said he'd tell me why he killed off Derrick Storm. And then it turned out he was still just working the case. Took me to a sports' bar where he reckoned we'd find our suspect."

She still sounds unimpressed. "That sounds like Castle's perfect date. Mixing business and pleasure."

"He was just trying to get back to you," Kate insists, defensive suddenly. Won't let her be angry at him, not for this, not when _she _has him.

"I'm sorry. I know he'd do anything for me." Her voice is softer, tone regretful. "It's just - I'm a little possessive, I guess."

Who wouldn't be? She didn't imagine the sickening jolt that shook her when Castle told her he was married. She doesn't even have claim to the jealousy and that didn't stop its - his - affect on her.

"Did he tell you?"

"What?"

"Why he killed off Storm."

"No."

"Oh…"

"Don't you know_?" _The idea that this version of her who's _married _to Richard Castle doesn't have the reason he ended his protagonist's life is preposterous - it had taken her all of two days to ask the question that had gnawed at her from the second she read the close of Stormfall.

"Well… he didn't, technically. Kill him off-"

"What?!"

"He resurrected him. But he didn't plan to, when he published Storm Fall."

Her heart aches with the knowledge that the character who got her through so much is out there alive and kicking in his fictional world, yearns to drown in those words. "So, you know why he originally wanted to end it?"

"He told me once… He told me Storm was getting boring, predictable - he knew what was going to happen every scene. There were no surprises left."

"You don't believe him." It's not a question.

"No, no - it's not that. I think it's… partly true. I was just wondering if he may have told you something - more. Deeper."

"He didn't tell me anything, in the end." She casts appraising eyes over the detective as the woman chews her bottom lip on the screen.

It really is bizarre, that - like some sort of horror movie with some other version of her trapped in the mirror; except, she realises, that of the two of them she is the darker. (Does that make her the demon in the glass?)

Her alternate remains silent for a moment, sizing her up. Still guarded, but like she wants to offer something up, the indecision visible in the tiny flare of her nostrils, the squint of the eyes. Kate recognises it from her own tells, shifts in expression she can feel herself making and is helpless to stop when she's trying to make her mind up.

Her mother pointed it out to her first, years before as she taught her to play poker at their dining room table, Kate balanced precariously on a stack of cushions she stacked on one of the high-backed, low seated chairs in order to sit high enough to be able to reach far enough in order to push her gummy bears in the centre of the solid oak to make her bet. ("Now, Katie - listen to me; gambling is bad. But it's slightly less awful if you're good at it, so here we go…")

The memory springs to mind unbidden, choking her throat with tears a decade and a half years old, but still fresh - there's no expiration date on this grief. It's then it strikes her that the woman she's talking to is the only person she's ever spoken to who could truly understand her loss, her coping mechanisms. The only one who shares every memory of her - _their - _mother. She hesitates, words on her lip that would open that avenue conversation but before she can broach the topic, the detective speaks.

"I think he wanted to grow up. I think - I don't think he knew at the time. I think he was tired of playing the bad boy, the shallowness of that life. I think he wanted more than that for himself. I - that's why I believe he was so insistent on staying at the Twelfth. He'd tell you it was me, but… he's a good man, the best. The life he was living wasn't him, isn't him - it was a construct. And I think killing Derrick Storm was his way of shedding that mask. The first step of it, at least… Took him a while to completely turn it around, but we got there. He's himself - with me, at least - now."

"He never dropped that _act _here." She's not sure why she's sharing that information when all it does is splice sorrow on the other woman's face. Isn't certain why she continues. "He is, was, always on page six with some girl twenty years younger than him, drunk off his face, getting into trouble. A trainwreck."

"No. Castle would _never _- he wasn't ever that bad here. Alexis. He has a daughter, he'd never go that-"

"His daughter? She lives in LA, with her mother." At least there's that, she thinks. The girl hadn't lost her primary caregiver. (It doesn't make the memory of her screams any easier to bear, though, the cries and accusations that her father had just come back to her, been himself again, and that if it hadn't been for Kate, he'd not have thrown himself in front of those bullets. And she'd have a father, again."

"With - Meredith? Alexis. In LA. With… her mother." The detective's pale, incredulous, looking vaguely nauseous. "She chose that? Over him."

"Like I said. He was kind of a mess here, the Castle that occupied my world."

"Past tense?"

"You weren't listening earlier?" Kate asks, because she definitely made some quip about it being good not to see Castle inside a body bag earlier when he leant into the frame of his camera, a desperate attempt at humour in the face of overwhelming, irrational relief.

"I was kind of freaking out, honestly. I missed most of that conversation."

It's a fair point. If Kate hadn't been forced to reconcile with the fact that things were strange and odd and not what they seem already then she may have found herself more phased by seeing her face - _but not her face -_ staring up at her from her phone than she was.

"He - you said you wanted me to start from the beginning. This is more like.. the end." Her heart ripples painfully, muscle tugging in different directions, pulling the organ apart from the inside out; she remembers it so clearly, his blood coating her hands, swift and slick and stinking of metal. Even now the stench haunts her, copper stinging her nostrils with the vision of him dying as she begged him to stay.

"Tell me." The detective demands. But it's weak, voice cracking as colour leeches from her face. As if she knows what's coming - from her counterpart's caution, her use of the past tense - but has the self-destructive need to know either way. "Now."

"I always was the type to skip to the last page," Kate murmurs to herself, but the other her catches it through the speaker, features distorting into a grimacing glare.

"Don't think you're me. You aren't me. I have _him_! We are _not _the same." Her voice is raised, panicked almost, sends a wave or irritation through the captain because she made the point herself. This other Kate has Castle, alive and well, rings binding them for better and for worse resting snugly on their fingers. What _right_ does she have to be upset about the prospect of this when it doesn't affect her, when she doesn't have to live with it, the blood on her hands and the memory of 'I love you' on his lips.

The unjustness of it all - that this man stumbled into her life and made it extraordinary, filled it with hope and self-belief and the stuff of fiction in a few short days just to leave just as suddenly as he came - has a tide of bitter anger rising in her, directed in jealousy at the woman he'd been measuring her up to, the woman she'd wanted to be, wants to be, even now. Why does _she _get to be happy? Why does _she _deserve it, deserve him?

It surges out of her harshly, tone acrimonious and brutal. "He _died. _Bled out on the ground in front of _me_. Took two bullets that were meant for _me_. Told _me _he loved _me. Me."_

The detective doesn't so much as flinch, face setting like stone, cold and unmoving. When she speaks, her voice is low, steady. Slow. "Don't kid yourself, Captain. He doesn't love you - you just look like me, talk like me. Have a shared past - but if you think for a second he would have given you the time of day if it weren't for that, you're delusional. You aren't me, you _can't _be me. He _married _me. Hours after you think he told you he loved you. What does that tell you, huh?"

"I-"

"It tells you that he reacted purely on instinct. That the way you look drove him to protect you. And then, when he was dizzy from blood loss and _dying, _he got confused and thought you were me."

"No, I-"

"And I don't know what you want from him, Captain - but don't you see? Even if he weren't mine, you couldn't have him. He can't _give _you anything. Because you're in a different freaking universe, or whatever the hell is going on here." She sighs, ferocity falling away, features pinching tiredly. The strength remains in her voice though, as she continues. "So. This whole situation is messed up, doesn't make sense and as far as I can tell it's not doing anyone any good. You're getting even more attached, he looked _so _pained when I came home. Tell me why I shouldn't hang up this phone. Tell me why I shouldn't hang up this phone, right now - just give me one good reason."

Heart hammering in her chest, rhythm faltering in it's stuttering staccato, each beat pumping a fresh wave of hurt through her body, every breath burning in her lungs she takes a risk. Chances angering the detective further because she knows the truth will force her to listen, _vincit omnia veritas _a motto that surely pulses through the other woman's veins as strongly as it does hers. And she's certain of her words, saw it in his eyes as they talked about even the things that separated her from his wife, his happy banter with her over the phone, the look on his face as they saw each other again via the screens of their phones.

She takes a deep breath, prays to every deity she knows of, doesn't even believe in, that the detective doesn't end the call, maybe her only chance of speaking to Castle again.

"Because he wouldn't want you to."

* * *

><p><strong>I suck and didn't get round to replying to reviews again because I'm rubbish and am drowning in school work, but I will probably do so this weekend - just want to make sure you know that I appreciate all your feedback, positive and constructively critical equally. Thanks so much for all your help and kind words. I have been blown away by the response to this story - it's massively weird to think nearly 200 people are about to get an email notifying them that I'm about to update this. So yeah, I just wanted to gush about how great you all are, agh, thank you again.<strong>

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